Page:BirdWatchingSelous.djvu/335

Rh came yesterday, five birds fly over the plantation but do not go down into it.

"At 6.15 a large, united flock of, perhaps, six or seven hundred fly up from over the ploughed land skirting the moor. They utter the 'chug-a, chug-a' note, characteristic of the homeward flight, but quietly; there is very little noise. Just before reaching the plantation they make a sort of circling eddy in the air—becoming, as it were, two streams that drift through each other—then sail on together and circle some three or four times exactly over it, before descending into its midst. This they do without any of the excited sweeping about of yesterday, and though, of course, the voice of so many birds is considerable, yet, comparatively, it is very subdued, and in a very short time—about five minutes—they all seem settled. Before long, however, some of them, but quite an inconsiderable number, rise and fly about over the trees again, but soon resettle, and there is, now, a deepening silence. No one could imagine that that little lonely clump of trees held all that great army of birds. All, to-night, has been wonderfully decorous. There was something majestic in the way the rooks flew up—slow-seeming yet swiftly-moving. Their flight round, over the trees, before sinking, like night and with the night, upon them, was a fine sombre scene—the thickening light ('light thickens and the crow'), the silent, lonely-spreading moor, the gloomy trees, and, above them, slow-circling in the dusky air, that inky cloud of life. It was gloomy, the effect—saddening, yet with the joy of nature's sadness. The spirit of Macbeth was in it—'Here on this blasted heath'—